Photo © William Eggleston
Election Eve
William Eggleston
Steidl
Hardback/Half-linen, 212 pages
Two decades before actor Wes Bentley would wax poetic about a windblown plastic bag in the film American Beauty, photographer William Eggleston introduced the notion of the banal made beautiful through his first artist book, Election Eve, in 1977. Eggleston would famously say “I am at war with the obvious” in 1989, but that assertion was already implied in this body of work: When Eggleston traveled from his home city of Memphis to Plains, Georgia, to capture Jimmy Carter’s hometown one month before the presidential election, he eschewed the typical visual political markers for a quiet portrait of rural Georgia. Not only that, but his images of “lonesome” cars, roads, gas stations and homes were at odds with the media’s idealized images of Plains.
Published as two leather-bound volumes in a linen box in an edition of five, Election Eve would become the photographer’s most sought-after collector’s item. This new release, published in one volume by Steidl, honors the original image sequence, making the complete work of 100 color prints widely available for the first time.
Election Eve would be the first body of work to cement Eggleston’s legacy as a visionary and as a pioneer of color photography; through a contemporary political lens, there is also a poignancy to the book. Writer Malcolm Jones, in a piece for The Daily Beast, best sums up the space that Election Eve inhabits: “It is a world that contains politics, on its verges at least, but it is not a world consumed by politics.”
—Jacqui Palumbo
Photo © Alice Hawkins
Alice’s Adventures
Alice Hawkins
Contributions by Katie Grand, Mark Haywood, John C. Jay, Frith Kerr and Nick Knight
Thames & Hudson
Softcover, 224 pages
UK-based Alice Hawkins may be first and foremost a fashion photographer, but her debut title Alice’s Adventures leaves no doubt that she’s as skilled at capturing the essence of foreign lands (Cuba, Jamaica, India, Nairobi and Russia, to name a few) as she is showcasing the clothing of the people she encounters.
Using rich colors, playful narratives and backgrounds that subtly hint at the unique locals on her travel roster, Hawkins creates a vibrant brand of candid fashion portraits from subjects she meets on the road—and almost all have never been photographed professionally before. “I love making friends with strangers,” she admits in the book’s forward. “Photographing a stranger can be a bonding experience. It gives me a thrill to travel and to cast as I go.”
Combining polaroids, handwritten notes and digital images, Alice’s Adventures reflects Hawkins’ experimental approach towards the fashion photography genre, placing subjects in staged physical environemnts and often in not-so-comfortable clothing. It’s also a testament to her wanderlust personality and talents as an unconventional travel shooter. “I want people with different views from diverse backgrounds to trust me so that I can capture and convey something of their reality and aspirations,” she writes. “Whenever I drive away from a subject or fly home from a new place, I feel like my life has been enriched and I look forward to my next adventure.”
—Stacey Goldberg
Photo © Rose Marie Cromwell
El Libro Supremo de la Suerte
Rose Marie Cromwell
TIS Books
Clothbound, 220 pages
Cuba’s rich cultural history is often pared down to a series of visual clichés by visiting photographers: a plethora of photo books followed the 2015 easing of U.S. travel restrictions, many of them checking off a series of familiar scenes. But Rose Marie Cromwell’s El Libro Supremo de la Suerte is different, a nonlinear story tied together by Cromwell’s nuanced eye and the esoteric nature of luck.
In Cuba, having a side hustle is almost a necessity; there’s a black market of everything from clothing and re-sold newspapers to video games, Hollywood movies and Internet connectivity. Cromwell’s monograph, which translates to “The Supreme Book of Luck,” refers to the underground lottery in Havana, la bolita, which consists of paper booklets that match numbers 1-100 with common things and experiences, such as “small fish,” “dark sun,” or “revolution.” In El Libro, Cromwell writes: “Winning the lottery is just a matter of identifying these symbols in your life.”
Cromwell’s photography echoes that ritual: Shadows on the street and common objects—such as a glass of water or leaves on the ground—are imbued with indeterminate meaning; in her portraits, each encounter becomes significant through gesture or expression. Of her scenes, which are both staged and found, Paula Kupfer writes that Cromwell visually ties “numbers—exact and absolute units of measurements—and the mystical, wayward ways of luck.”
Though Cromwell acknowledges her outsider status (she is Miami-based), she has spent a significant amount of time in Cuba since 2005, crediting the country’s role in her own coming of age, both personally and as an artist. This body of work is an homage to the gravity of her experience there, as well as her “relentless search for intimacy and spirituality.”
—Jacqui Palumbo
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